BL460c Image OK but dns & Remote Desktop Name Issues

[Neil Bell]

I have 16 bl460c with two Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 installed.

I have succesfully created a win 2003 R2 build with PSP, default scripted from Altris RDP, manually running disk 2.

I created an RDP image with quick disk image and deployed to other blades resizing the partition to 15gb. The Image deploys fine to all machines reconfigures etc (no errors in Altiris or either the blade or RDP server).

My problem is that:

5 of the blades work fine, created 2 DC's and 3 member servers. However the remainder of the blades can ping the dns server (Blades 1&2) and anything else by IP but cannot resolve dns names (all NIC's configured the same as previous working 5, tried disabling NIC2 in BIOS)

I have noticed that the Blades that have this problem also show the correct computer name under system, but the remote desktop info shows the computer name as ? (question mark).

This would appear to be some issue with the registry which may also affect the NIC's and cause the dns issue.

I have rebuilt my deployment server (DL380) from scratch, deleted the partitions on the blades and the same problem arises.

All blades have their NICs mapped to the the default ports 1-16 on switches 1&2.

System Components
HP BladeSystem c7000, two Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020, switch 1 connected to the deployment server.

Anyone had any problems similar to this or any ideas please?

[Gordon Leonard]

Does the problem follow the server (move the server to a different bay) or is it locked to a bay?

Are all the server firmware the same?
iLo firmware the same?

[Neil Bell]

All server & ILO firmware are the same. I removed the second Cicso switch from the chasis to eliminate it.

Moving one of the working machines into a bay that had problems remains working. Moving a problematic server to a previous working bay still has problems. So it appears not comms or bay related.

I can build a faulty blade in the same bay from a scripted install and it functions OK. The problems start again when it's imaged and redeployed back with the partition resized to 15GB.

The machines with the faults have errors in the event log regarding Simple TCP services. It's not just DNS they cant ping netbios names, even its own hostname.

I can only assume that the sidchanger is at fault causing issues but nothing is reported.

I'm using Altiris DS version 6.5 SP1 which is stated to be Win 2003 R2 compatible.

Has anyone deployed imaged 2k3 R2 onto these blades OK?

[Christopher Maddux]

I have seen this exact issue on BL20p G3, BL25p and DL385 G1 servers. They can ping everything by IP, but the servers can not resolve any names by any means. The servers cannot even ping their own name...

I've only seen it with Win2k3 R2. The only way around it has been with scripted installs or booting off a virtual CD and doing a clean install. Imaging never worked for any of these.

I am using RDP v3.10 (Altiris DS 6.8)

[Neil Bell]

OK, thanks for backing that up. I'll build from script.

[Jaragon]

Neil:

You are almost nailing the issue, this happens when SID Changer doesn't finish appropiatly, the easiest way of fixing it is look for reparing the netbios client capabilities, there's a lot of that in google, it will involve light registry editing and a lot of cmd commands. ( itook me a couple of days to figure it out, less than 1 hour when I got the correct fix).

[Christopher Maddux]

I found an easier solution on the Altiris forums. Just add the following registry strings and reboot the server:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
"Domain"=""
"NV Domain"=""

I still run into this once and a while, but adding these registry settings works every time.

Christopher

[Neil Bell]

Has it been identified that this is the only issue when the sidchanger doesnt finish correctly? It may be that there are other non-obvious errors still in the registry.

[Christopher Maddux]

There is no mention of the sidchanger in the Altiris forum. I don't think they have narrowed down why this is happening.

Christopher

[brooklyn98]

Microsoft's article states it's an issue with some imaging software. I'm curious what software was used.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945980